THE LONDON QUARTERLY REVIEW. NO. CCXCIII. FOR JANUARY, 1879. ART. I.-1. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's | man firmament a group of intellectual atoms Sämmtliche Schriften. Neu durchgese- until then floating in a state of inorganic soluhen und vermehrt von W. von Maltzahn. 12 Vols. Leipzig, 1853-71. 2. Lessing. By James Sime. 2 Vols. London, 1877. 3. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. His Life 4. Lessing's Laokoon. Edited by A. Ha- tion. That quickening influence was moreover confined within no technical limits; it was general and deep. Lessing unloosened, by the power of his touch, the tongue of his countrymen, then in the cradle of their literary revival, and feebly attempting to stammer forth ideas in a language which since Luther's days had been left to lie without culture. Most assuredly Lessing's title to originalOx-ity cannot be disputed. Whatever he became, he became by the force of his own impulse. There is no trace of his having directly taken in aught from outside sources, whether native or foreign, whether individual or collective. Influences are of course to be traced on him as on every human being, but in no instance did Lessing sink into an imitator, much less a copyist. In an age of feebleness, when his countrymen palpably leant on models in their literary efforts, Lessing never reproduced in any of his creations the outline of some visible example. Born at the point of time when German mind was just awakening to life, and was trying to make its first strides with babyish gait, Lessing from the outset stepped forth in the fulness of masculine strength, exhibited an intellect of diamond-like clearness and keenness, and expressed himself with a terseness, a vigour and a point, such as language generally acquires only after generations of culture. In him there was nothing nebulous, uncertain or involved; from subtlety of thought he was at times enigmatic, but he never was ambiguous. In none of his writings can it be said that Lessing THE appearance within a few months of two English biographies of Lessing amply attests the powerful spell that attaches to his name. The sense, though dim and hazy, that exists abroad as to Lessing having been a man of superior order, is a striking illustration of the abiding impression that is wrought by genius. He flashed upon contemporaries in his own land such startling bursts of light, that subsequent generations, even in remote parts, have retained a tradition of the emotion produced on the spot, and have instinctively continued to connect the idea of Lessing with that of a strangely daring luminary which suddenly directed a blaze of weird illumination upon things previously left in specious twilight by minds of a more timid fibre. This impression is not incorrect. Lessing undeniably takes rank amongst intellects of first-class calibre, and particularly amongst the intellects that have imparted an abiding impulse out of their spontaneous vigour. His genius had in it the force which at once quickened in the Ger Zimmern is deserving of sympathy, for she has had the misadventure to find herself forestalled just as she was on the eve of publication. Her handy book is likely, however, to be more popular than Mr. Sime's two volumes. She tells Lessing's life in a decidedly more pleasant manner, and her narrative is generally correct, and sufficiently detailed. On the other hand, those who would push their studies farther, and wish to know about Lessing's relation to the intellectual currents abroad in his day had better turn to Mr. Sime's elaborate volumes. The latter is the profounder scholar, and his acquaintance with German is manifestly superior to that possessed by Miss Zimmern. showed himself under the control of domi- | nant fashions or of prevailing mannerisms. And as he never bound himself to any one in apprenticeship, so also he left behind him no specific disciple, though the number was great of those strongly affected by his influence. At no moment was Lessing ever so little a visionary or a sentimentalist. The undimmed brightness of his keen intellect burnt on calmly amidst the haze of heated enthusiasms and nebulous conceptions, though he lived in close contact with individual minds that by their force and example swept many who were of more than average strength into fanciful exaggerations and confirmed mannerisms. Like a marble statue that comes from its master's chisel, perfectly set in all its parts, so Lessing appeared before the unformed German world, a splendidly built man, strong and healthy in all his parts; with a mind of admirable faculties animated by an unflagging and fearless spirit of research-a spirit with such singleminded devotion to the pursuit of research, that to quail before consequences was a feeling it did not know; the whole nature being seasoned by sympathies so generous and warm, so broad and unselfish, so thoroughly tolerant and free from taint of big-bers had been distinguished for orthodox otry, that the man may be said to have been quite transfigured by a sublime essence. Henceforward there will be no excuse if the British public does not know all about this remarkable man. Seldom have two such elaborate memorials been raised to any one in the language of a foreign country as the two books cited above. Both show on the part of the authors genuine study of their subject; both are marked by unusual ability in its treatment. Mr. Sime has brought to his labours an assiduity and a breadth of discussion which are somewhat excessive, perhaps, and remind us occasionally of a Dutch commentator. Indeed, his merits amount almost to a fault. He furnishes the reader with such minute analyses of Lessing's writings, that the biographical narrative has suffered in interest. No summary and no disquisition, however laborious, will give such a vivid representation of an author's writings as can supersede the originals, for those who are interested enough to make a thorough study of him. Mr. Sime, out of enthusiasm for his theme, has overlooked this fact. We regret it, because the general reader can hardly fail to be deterred from doing justice to a capital book, when he finds whole chapters devoted to tedious and sometimes superfluous summaries. At the same time, if prolix, the criticisms plentifully scattered through the book are commendably accurate, and the fruit of close study. Miss It is always of interest to note the conditions under which those who became distinguished for genius were ushered into the world. None could certainly have appeared less propitious for the rearing of a bold and innovating spirit than those which surrounded the paternity and the early training of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. He was born in 1729 at Kamenz, an insignificant town in the Saxon portion of Upper Lusatia. The family stock was of a stubborn Lutheran fibre; during generations its mem fervour, and an almost uniform adoption of the theological calling. One ancestor is, in-> deed, credited with having, in an Academical disquisition, advocated general toleration; but this symptom of Latitudinarianism was quite singular in the family history. Lessing's father was a Lutheran pastor of emphatically orthodox type. And as the sire, so too was the mother, whose father had himself been the incumbent at Kamenz -a homely, unsophisticated woman, apparently without a trace of higher culture, but well fitted by her housewife-like qualities to husband to the uttermost the painfully small means at the command of her spouse. Scrupulous literalism, stern Puritanism, lively horror of the sacrilegious impiousness personified by the Roman Catholic Church, and of the ungodliness embodied in the doings of a gay and a luxurious world, made up the stock of homespun sentiments for this abstemious, primitive, Godfearing, but decidedly sectarian couple. And if this array of sternly rigid influences might seem uncongenial to the development of a sprightly mind, so too were the material conditions of the family little calculated to let sunny rays lighten up the existence of a playful and fun-loving child. Penury-nay, at times, absolute indigence-weighed on the homestead of this Protestant minister, and cast on it the chill shade of pinching want and of sharp privation. But no pres 6 sure, however serious, of material troubles | cager lad on his first encounter with the for a moment made the father's mind falter varied and boisterous realities of student life. as to what was to be the career of his eldest The position then held by Leipzig, not only born. Young Lessing was destined by as a University, but still more as the cenhis parents from infancy for the family tral point of what was considered in Gercalling. Like his forefathers, he was many to be its intellectual movement, remeant to become a preacher of Doctor quires to be realized in order to understand Martin Luther's doctrine. There were then the peculiar attraction which it was likely in Saxony several educational establishments to present before the mind of a keen and for boys intended for the ministry. One susceptible youth. There were, indeed, was at Meissen, in the suppressed monastery many Academical foundations in Germany, of St. Afra, and here a scholarship was se- but, with the exception of Leipzig, none cured for Lessing in 1741. The tone of the had acquired more than technical repute in institution was punctiliously pedantic, and connection with particular faculties. They the instruction given was of a pronounced were known as schools of theology, or of theological character. 'When in Meissen medicine, or of law, but for general culture I saw that much had to be learnt there and for the higher study of letters, Leipzig which could be turned to no account in the in that period of intellectual beginnings conworld,' -was Lessing's retrospective remark centrated within itself the forces which were in after-life. Still he contrived to distil a unconsciously quickening into life the longgood deal of knowledge out of the uncon- continued torpor of German mind. It was genial teaching he had to submit to. It is in Leipzig that were domiciled, and in Leipcharacteristic of his turn of mind that he ea- zig that beamed, those now obliterated congerly studied the Latin classics, Plautus and stellations, Gottsched and Gellert, who in Terence being his special favourites. Still the thin atmosphere of that infantine season more indicative of his original impulses is twinkled like stars of the first magnitude, the circumstance that he tried his hand on but have since faded from sight in the brila comedy, for dramatic composition was liant gleam shed by a galaxy of luminaries, quite foreign to the spirit of this seminary. of whom Lessing was amongst the first to A good boy, but somewhat satirical,' beam over the horizon. What Gottsched was the observation made by one master; preached was that Germans should discard while the Rector reported him to be a horse foreign importations, and produce a literathat required double fodder, tasks being to ture of their own out of national elements. him mere child's play, that by others were He especially proclaimed the necessity of found too hard.' Notwithstanding this com- creating a native drama, so as to banish from mendation, Lessing was not happy; while, the stage the French and Italian composion the other hand, the masters were puzzled tions which then constituted the sole reperwhat to make of their rather wayward pupil. tory of Germany. He had the enterprise to He himself earnestly besought his father to start a literary journal, the first of the kind remove him before the customary six years' published in Germany, which was made the term was over, and ultimately had his prayer vehicle for active propagandism in populargranted, on his precociously attaining the izing an improved literature. In its pages highest class. Accordingly in 1746, being just were published the opening cantos of Klopseventeen, Lessing proceeded to the univer- stock's 'Messiah,' a poem now indeed antisity of Leipzig, a choice due to the circum- quated, but which was a production of undestance of his having again been favoured niable merit, and, above all, the first with a scholarship in the gift of the Kamenz considerable literary work of a distinctly Teumagistracy at that seat of learning, for other- tonic type. As such it struck the popular imwise the father would have sent him to Wit- agination, and had a telling influence on tenberg, then still a highly considered school the national taste by kindling patriotic of Lutheran theology. admiration for the homesprung tone of a composition wrought by a native artist in a style not borrowed from current models. It was German literature, as the outcome of what was indigenous to, and spontaneous in, German habits of thought and German feelings, that was really ushered into the world by the appearance in Gottsched's periodical of Klopstock's didactic and ponderous verses. The exertions of these Leipzig reformers were not, however, confined to mere propagandism. Through the medium of his A youth's entrance upon the freedom of University life constitutes an epoch even with those best prepared for the promotion, but to Lessing it was an abrupt plunge out of the carefully barred confinement of a monastic seminary into the tumultuous current of the world's tide. It was not merely a sense of emancipation from pedantic leading-strings that befel him; the stunning sensation of a wholly new world, with facts and interests never before contemplated, overcame the literary organ, Gottsched strove, and with success, to endow his chosen seat of residence with what, in the then barrenness of the German world, was an institution of Phoenix-like rarity—a temple dedicated to the Thespian Muse. When Berlin was actually without any German playhouse whatever, Leipzig could boast of one in which, under the direction of an actress of culture, Frau Neuber, a trained troop acted plays arranged or written by Gottsched, according to his reforming principles for a national drama. Enough has now been said to show what, a bewildering flood of novelties Leipzig must have presented to a young man of Lessing's peculiarly old-fashioned training but very susceptible nature, and how thoroughly calculated all this was, on the one hand to stir his eager interest, on the other to distract his mind-nay, even to shake to their foundations the staid order of stern views which alone were in conformity with the paternal principles. Long after this heyday season of student comradeship, the two men still remained partners in some literary undertakings, though on Lessing's part the original intimacy became subject to serious modifications. His nature was too serious and too manly to put up permanently with the volatile, dissipated, and feeble character of the other. That Mylius's parts were of a high order is incontestable, but the man's irrepressible irregularities dragged him down perforce into the gutter, notwithstanding the repeated extension of helping hands. After the collapse of several ambitious ventures, thanks to his remarkable plausibility of speech, Mylius contrived to persuade a number of persons taking interest in science, amongst them the eminent Haller, that if only he could travel into the wild regions of America, he might render excellent service for its promotion. Funds were actually subscribed-a matter by no means easy in the impecunious condition that prevailed in the German world of letters and science and Mylius was duly started on his expedition. But the command of cash instantly proved too much for the confirmed rake. Instead of sailing for his destination, Mylius lingered on in the low pleasurehaunts of London, consorting with artists and players, spent his funds, then wrote to his German patrons for a further supply, and ended his days wretchedly in a London hospital. Such was the man who became Lessing's bosom friend and comrade on his first entry upon the always slippery walk of University life, and the consequences were natural. Mylius not merely accompanied Lessing to the pit; he took him behind the scenes, introduced him into the green-room, aud made him acquainted with the actors, men and women, of the troop. Lessing became their daily associate; the lecture-room was abandoned for the theatre; the studies of the university were changed for that of the stage. That the young student found strong attraction in the charms of a member of the troop, a Fräulein Lorenz, of whose talents in maturer years he spoke dispar Lessing's University career was marked by considerable irregularities, and the facilities of personal liberty, coupled with certain magnetic attractions, drew him into courses which were, to say the least, not well adapted for training a student who was to walk demurely in the paths of pious Lutheran orthodoxy. It has been seen that at St. Afra Lessing had already once tried his hand on a dramatic composition, though nothing could be possibly more abhorrent to the spirit of the school. The fact is that Lessing had an inborn inclination towards the drama, and consequently he had not been many weeks in Leipzig before he found himself drawn irresistibly to Frau Neuber's theatre. Night after night would he be seen in the pit, watching with rapt attention and studying with keen interest the action of the performers. His mind became engrossed in the stage and in Frau Neuber's company. In this passion he was much abetted by the habits of his most intimate chum' and fellow-student, one Mylius, a man of undeniable talents, but a very unsafe companion. Mylius was a random scapegrace, one of those clever ne'er-do-agingly, is tolerably clear. Yet warm as his wells who are continually out at elbows struggle through life by a spasmodic and jerky exercise of their wits-delight in grotesquely setting at naught customary proprieties and always dash their own prospects, partly by indiscreet sallies, but still more from inability to resist the attractions of dissipation. He came, like Lessing, from Kamenz, where he had made himself notorious by outraging the decorous feelings of the God-fearing citizens, through a rhymed satire on the Puritanism of the magistrates. personal feelings were towards this lady, it is not to them that should be ascribed the special fascination that made him connect himself so intimately with the troop of players. Lessing was prominently distinguished for a healthy and vigorous realism. He was wholly free from that prevalent pallor of sentimentalism which then produced a plentiful crop of mawkish eclogues and vapid pastorals. He ever drew his inspiration from human beings as they were to be seen in the busy scenes of the world. His mind had a keen sense for the play and flow of life; it entered with zest into the excitement of amusements, and it responded with healthy quickness to nature's call for physical enjoyment. But it should also be carefully noted that Lessing never became overmastered by the flush of such pulsations, and that the athletic symmetry of his finely chiselled nature was never disfigured by undue development of the grosser fibres. There is no indication that on any occasion the clearness of Lessing's mind was for an instant clouded by the steam of debauch, though certainly no anchoret-like tendencies ever prompted him to look with disfavour on social pleas ures. In this combination of a truly lofty intellect with a system sufficiently sensuous to enter with zest into the excitements of life consists the distinctive character which made of Lessing the remarkable man he became, not merely for contemporaries but posterity. A seer of transcendent keenness, scanning calmly with unfaltering self-possession through the lens of his daring intellect those highest altitudes of mysterious thought, the idea of scrutinizing which makes ordinary mortals giddy, Lessing, on shutting the enigmatic volume of bold speculation, would descend from the loneliness of his high observatory to disport himself for relaxation in facile intercourse with ordinary mortals in their everyday haunts, and on the level of their everyday amusements. Of this remarkable characteristic, not to let a higher aim drop out of sight, Lessing afforded striking proof in this season of his Leipzig wild oats. He forsook, indeed, academical and still more all theological pursuits for intercourse with actors and actresses-he dined and he supped with them, and he was the constant frequenter of the green-room-he was even on terms of decidedly questionable intimacy with a lady member of the company, and he spent more money than his scholarship put into his pocket; in a word, he did many things which parents far less strait-laced than an old-fashioned Puritan pastor must have viewed with concern; yet all this time, far from being engrossed in the coarser pleasures of boon-companionship, he was throwing himself with passionately earnest vigour into the work of serious labour in connection with the drama. Lessing began with an extraordinary activity to sketch out plays. Altogether there remain nearly fifty such fragments from this period of his life. The distinguishing feature of these attempts is that they aim at representing characters from actual life and not from a nebulous and conventional world. It is also noteworthy that the plots, instead of being taken from French sources, then the fashionable models, seem in several instances to have been suggested by English dramatists, such as Congreve and Wycherley. The most important of these compositions is a play called' The Young Scholar,' in which a University pedant is ridiculed. It was accepted by Frau Neuber, put in rehearsal, and in January 1748 was acted, as we are told, amidst the 'laughter of the spectators and the clapping of hands.' But at this moment of triumph there came, what is only to be wondered had not come before, a stinging reproof from the old pastor at Kamenz. To the ears of the God-fearing couple a report had come about the doings of that son whom they had sent forth to the high school of learning that he might qualify himself for the ministry of God, and the report, brought by an officious friend, was one to strike sorrow into the soul, for it exhibited a son so utterly gone astray into the paths of vice as to have become forgetful of the commonest filial decorum. In Germany, and the more primitive the circle the more this holds true, Christmas is emphatically the holy feast of the domestic hearth. An inexpressible sense of sanctity attaches to the annual meeting of the family circle around the blazing tree, and to the interchange of love-gifts in the illumination of its sheen. However poor a family may be, it is to the fact of the presentment of such tokens, no matter of what humble character, that it looks for the proper keeping of this festival, and not to the serving of sumptuous cheer. And thus did that most unsophisticated and strictly observant couple at Kamenz. Circumstances indeed forbad the presence in the flesh of their eldest offspring; but that her first-born should be without a token of heartfelt communion on this blessed anniversary, the true old mother could not abide. The household means were indeed very straitened, and no memento could possibly be afforded but of a touchingly homely texture. The good woman set to baking for her distant child a cake of bread; and this loaf of love, with one bottle of wine (all the cellar could furnish), she confided to a neighbour who had to visit the Leipzig mart on matters of business. The neighbour went thither, and he gave what he was charged with to Lessing; but during his stay at Leipzig he also saw and heard about the young man what grievously troubled his Puritan soul, and which, on his return,. he deemed it a duty forthwith to pour out into the bewildered hearing of the pastor and his spouse. They were told that the child of their fond love was become a notorious reprobate-that his name was in the public |